Can Nicotine Protect An Aging Brain?

[Alex]

Friday, October 14, 2016

Can Nicotine Protect An Aging Brain?
September 21, 2016
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Everyone knows that tobacco products are bad for your health, and even the new e-cigarettes may have harmful toxins. However, according to research at Texas A&M, it turns out the nicotine itself—when given independently from tobacco—could help protect the brain as it ages, and even ward off Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease.

Ursula Winzer-Serhan, PhD, an associate professor at the Texas A&M College of Medicine, and her collaborators found that nicotine’s ability to be neuroprotective may be partly due to its well-known ability to suppress the appetite. Their research is published in the Open Access Journal of Toxicology.

Using animal models, Winzer-Serhan and her collaborators added nicotine to the animal’s drinking water. There were three different groups that received nicotine at three different concentrations (low, medium and high) corresponding to occasional, low and medium smokers, respectively, in addition to a control group that did not receive any nicotine.

The two groups that received nicotine at low and medium doses didn’t show any levels of the drug in their blood and they experienced no changes in food intake, body weight or number of receptors in the brain where nicotine acts. In contrast, the group getting the highest concentration of nicotine ate less, gained less weight and had more receptors, indicating that at higher doses, the drug gets into the brain where it can impact behavior. However, even at high doses, it didn’t seem to have worrying behavioral side effects like making the individuals more anxious, which the researchers were concerned could happen.

“Some people say that nicotine decreases anxiety, which is why people smoke, but others say it increases anxiety,” Winzer-Serhan said. “The last thing you would want in a drug that is given chronically would be a negative change in behavior. Luckily, we didn’t find any evidence of anxiety: Only two measures showed any effect even with high levels of nicotine, and if anything, nicotine made animal models less anxious.”

The next step is to test nicotine’s potential anti-aging effects using aged animal models. Although early results indicate that nicotine can keep older individuals from gaining weight like the control group does, Winzer-Serhan hasn’t yet determined whether this lower body mass index translates into less degeneration of the brain. It is also unclear if nicotine’s effects are related only to its ability to suppress appetite, or if there are more mechanisms at work.

Because there are still so many unknowns, Winzer-Serhan urges caution. “I want to make it very clear that we’re not encouraging people to smoke,” she said. “Even if these weren’t very preliminary results, smoking results in so many health problems that any possible benefit of the nicotine would be more than cancelled out. However, smoking is only one possible route of administration of the drug, and our work shows that we shouldn’t write-off nicotine completely.”

Still, Winzer-Serhan cautions people not to purchase nicotine-containing products just yet. “Although the results are intriguing, we would need large-scale clinical trials before suggesting anyone change their behavior,” she said. “At the end of the day, we haven’t proven that this addictive drug is safe—and it certainly isn’t during childhood or adolescence—or that the benefits outweigh the potential risks.”

source: http://today.tamu.edu/2016/09/21/can-nicotine-protect-an-aging-brain/

 

[Muhammad Peer]

Even if there is good, its outweighed by the bad

 

[Alex]

Even if there is good, its outweighed by the bad

To what extent do the natural MAOIs in cigarettes contribute to addiction?

I've read speculation that electronic cigarettes are "just as addictive" as normal cigarettes because they still contain nicotine. This claim seems incorrect to me, because it is my understanding that, while pure nicotine is certainly addictive, the naturally occurring MAOIs in cigarettes are a very important factor in cigarette addiction. Is there any good, published research assessing the relative dependence liability?

Chris Price, Practical nicotine applications, author of The Great Nicotine Myth, etc.
Updated 23 May

If you state things like, "pure nicotine is certainly addictive", please be aware that you are simply repeating propaganda. There isn't a single published clinical trial that demonstrates never-smokers or never-users of tobacco can become dependent on pure nicotine, whether by itself or in NRTs, or in vaporisers (ecigs) - despite there being multiple clinical trials of pure nicotine administered in high doses to never-smokers.

I can guarantee you three things:

1. If it were possible to demonstrate that consumption of pure nicotine can lead to dependence, it would have been demonstrated in a clinical trial. Not just once, but in dozens of them.
2. If it were possible to demonstrate that use of e-cigarettes (ecigs, vaporisers, electronic vaporisers) can lead to dependence, it would have been demonstrated in a clinical trial. Almost certainly more than once.
3. Many such clinical trials must have been carried out because there is a fortune waiting for anyone who can show either of these two cases. All of them, apparently, failed to find a single person who became dependent on nicotine, without first having consumed tobacco.

There is $20 million dollars waiting right now for the first person to show that pure nicotine is 'addictive' for never-users of tobacco (the correct term is 'dependence' when the substance is harmless or has a risk too low to measure - as with nicotine, which is a normal dietary component related to the B vitamin group).

There is $20 million dollars waiting right now for the first person to show that ecigs can cause dependence. That is the value to the pharmaceutical industry, to be able to show that ecigs may be dangerous and people should stick to their licensed interventions instead, when considering smoking cessation. Mostly, though, to scare people off THR in order to keep smoking disease rates high (which pays much better than any NRT sales).

Funnily enough, no one has ever shown in a CT that NRTs create dependence in never-smokers. You might want to ask why not. Do you think the nicotine molecule goes through a remarkable change when a medical label is stuck on it?

Nicotine requires delivery in a tobacco vehicle for any dependence to be created.

For information on current nicotine research, please google the leading authority: Dr Paul Newhouse. He has administered more pure nicotine to more never-smokers in larger amounts for longer in more clinical trials than anyone else in the world. It's his day job. He states: "The risk of addiction to nicotine alone is virtually nil."

So, having dispensed with the propaganda in your question, let's look at the actual query.

There have been a couple of studies that attempted to find out why cigarettes are addictive when it is well-known within the research community that nicotine isn't [1]. There is a basic problem here, which is that any such research is actively discouraged, and researchers who engage in it may find they have harmed their careers. This is because the CDC, NIH and FDA do everything possible to prevent any increase in knowledge in this field.

Perhaps before this was clearer, some researchers did look at the addiction factors in smoking [2]. There are two components of addiction, of course: the chemical dependency and the psychological dependency.

Looking at just the chemical dependency issue, by using lab models (animal research) they found that nicotine had no dependence potential, but when administered with MAOIs it became a dependence-creating material. Other such research also implicates aldehydes, pyrolytic aldehydes, and other tobacco alkaloids (e.g. anatabine), though less robustly.

Smoking is clearly more addictive than oral tobacco use, so it is reasonable to conclude that the products of pyrolysis have some role. The psychological dependency factor cannot be eliminated either, since smoking addiction is complex and is likely to have different components in different people.

If you wish to look at research into the chemical dependency aspect, then search on terms such as: <nicotine and maois>, <nicotine and anatabine>, <nicotine and aldehydes>, <smoking addiction maois>, etc. Pubmed is a good place to start, then Google. You will find a lot of good clues, but nothing of any real substance, because this area of research is positively discriminated against [3].

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[1] If there were any doubts about this, then ethics panels would not continually approve trials of pure nicotine with unexposed subjects, as they do; and researchers would not administer large doses for long periods to such subjects, as they do. We would also read about huge damages awarded in civil actions against the institutions involved, as there would be, for example, if they had administered heroin in the same way.

No one has ever been demonstrated to show any sign of dependence after such trials. In addition, there is no - repeat: no - documented harm from nicotine consumption by humans. Humans are in fact designed to consume it, since it is part of the normal diet.

[2] Please note that the correct terminology according to the modern convention is to refer to a harmless habit (such as compulsive birdwatching), or one with a health impact that is too small to measure (such as dependence on nicotine after quitting smoking), or one that may be harmful but where it is fashionable to ignore the harm (such as coffee consumption), as dependence.

The correct term for a habit with significant risk, meaning that harm is measurable and uncontested (such as smoking cigarettes), is addiction.

To refer to something with a risk too small to measure such as compulsive birdwatching or vaping as addiction is deliberately inflammatory and unscientific.

[3] There are commercial and ideological reasons for this, which unfortunately combine to prevent any advance in knowledge.

source: https://www.quora.com/To-what-extent-do-the-natural-MAOIs-in-cigarettes-contribute-to-addiction

 

[Muhammad Peer]

My point is: Nicotine, addictive or not, regardless of its possible and proven benefits, is a chemical that causes negative effects on your body and method that we're using to consume this nicotine results in the negatives outweighing the positives.

 

[Andre]

I have read a lot about pure nicotine and agree with many who make the statement the nicotine (by itself) is in the same class as caffeine at most. It has also being shown to help with Parkinsons, Alzheimers and other diseases.